Flashforward - Robert J. Sawyer

'He used his index finger to gently lift Michiko’s chin. He was all set with the words—duty, responsibility, work to be done, we have to go—but Michiko was strong in her own way, too, and wise, and wonderful, and he loved her to her very soul, and the words didn’t need to be said. She managed a small nod, her lips trembling. “I know,” she said in English, in a tiny, raw voice. “I know we have to head back to CERN.”'

I’ll start off with this: I read Flashforward because I loved the TV show with the same name that came out i

n 2009 and which was very very very loosely based on this book), so it’s fair you expect to hear lots of comparisons between these two. I’ll try and review the book as a separate entity, however. Oh, and as a curious detail – I read most of this book while taking a train to St. Petersburg and the rest while wandering around the city.

So, the book has this premise: One day, the whole planet Earth blacks out for 2 minutes and 17 seconds. Every single human consciousness not only tunes out from the present moment, but also jumps 20 years into the future. People see relationships ruined, new ones started, children and husbands and graves and for some, nothing. Many die in car crashes, plane crashes or simply walking down the stairs as the event occurs. In the centre of the book are a group of scientists who ran an experiment at the time the Flashforward occurred, leaving them to worry and wonder whether they caused this horrible massacre without knowing it or ever meaning to.

‘Who would have thought that two people who had scrimped and saved and sacrificed year after year to buy each other lavish Christmas presents as tokens of their loves would end up using legal claws to pry those presents back from the only person in the world to whom they meant anything?’

Flashforward tackles many interesting science fiction and philosophical concepts, like the many-worlds interpretation, the whole “will we have flying cars in 20 years?” question, the concept of free will. Every once in a while it also has beautiful insights to human life, like the quotes I picked out, but those are way too rare and all too precious.

Without Snapchat filters, you'd never
know the location or the weather!
(sorry not very)

The book has many characters from whose point of view the Flashforwards are discussed, which is a blessing and a curse. On one hand, this provides variety and makes the event itself more interesting, but on the other no one really gets enough time to become interesting as a character. Another thing the book handles really well is discussing the worldwide – it seems actually interested in what happens in China, what people in Russia do et cetera. This goes into so much detail it’s almost like the book is more interested in being a case study on the phenomenon than providing an actual story.

Not that I really minded; it’s an incredibly interesting case study and I can see how taking the plot in any one direction could have changed that. And the plot does change that; somewhere in the last third it takes an incredibly weird turn I didn’t like and that I couldn’t relate to, something that was just plain… weird. Unfitting for the book and something I didn’t care about. It was a brief 30 or so pages of “I wanted to write a different book after all” and probably took a full point from my rating of it.

Quick comparison to the TV show (which I would recommend if the Flashforward as a concept interests you and if you don’t mind that it never got renewed for a second season) – the TV show has a Flashforward only six months in the future and focuses on FBI agents trying to figure out why it happened (the main characters in the book play minor roles in it). The plot is much more contained and, well, it’s an actual plot. The TV show only briefly mentions the existence of any other continents, in a proper USA style, but it handles its few characters better. Long story short; the book does a good job on the Flashforward itself but don’t expect a stellar plot from it. Still, worth the read.

I have to confess I haven’t read any other works by Robert J. Sawyer but I’ll make it a point in my endless to-do list to… do. Obviously I should; anyone remotely interested in science fiction should. Flashforward wasn’t bad but I’m sure he can do better.

The Spectacular Now - Tim Tharp

“Yeah,” she says. I’m beginning to see that her “yeahs” are almost always two syllables, one for “yes” and the other for “but I don’t know if anything will ever come of it.”

The Spectacular Now, I’d say, is a novel about youth. It’s about finding yourself and about finding your place, sometimes it’s about finding that there’s no place for you. It’s real and young and it should be everything I ever wanted.

The two main characters, the narrator Sutter Keely and the girl with insight, Aimee Finicky, are about as different as any two people can be. He’s foolhardy, outgoing and careless, she’s warm, calculating and only has wild adventures in her daydreams. She lives in the future, where she has worked out everything, while he doesn’t even want to think a day ahead of time. He gets the rare chance to make a change in her life, to convince her to come out of her shell and live, but at the same time he could end up ruining her. Of course, on this mission, which is not about seducing her, they end up dating, the unlikely couple surprising working. That’s pretty much the plot of the book, leaving out only what happens after they’ve ended up dating.

Oftentimes Sutter got on my nerves, for he is self-righteous and presents his thoughts like they’re the only truth. Empirical observing turned into scientific facts, he believes he understand guys, girls and life better than the people around him. The novel is clearly written by a man, and Sutter, while thinking of himself as a gentleman, ends up being a terrible jerk more than once. Maybe I’m not Aimee, but I didn’t find his carelessness about everything charming or even bearable. I don’t think people should be allowed to be so immature all the way until early adulthood. I didn’t like him constantly thinking about himself first, no matter how many times he named Aimee as his priority.

Sutter searching for his father felt much like the search in The Fault in Our Stars – if you want something too much, build it up in your mind and think it’s everything you’ve ever wanted, you’re bound to be disappointed. Only one of these books ends in a catharsis I found personally satisfying, however. I felt like The Spectacular Now didn’t have enough real, actual, heart-breaking joy to make up for the times it made me sad and despairing. The balance was off and the book left me wanting something else.

There’s that 2013 movie based on this book, and if I understand it correctly, it ends well differently from the book. I don’t know if I’m happy with that. I didn’t like the ending I read, but maybe that just meant I didn’t like what I had set out to read. The actors are some of the current YA novel-to-movie favourites – Miles Teller, Brie Larson and Shailene Woodley. Maybe I’ll give it a watch one of these days, since the novel wasn’t a total waste of my time. It wasn’t good, either.

PS. Sorry about not posting anything lately - I lost my laptop charger and finally, finally caved in and bought a new one! Will be posting reviews on all the books I've read this summer asap!

Room - Emma Donoghue

"Jack. He'd never give us a phone, or a window. Ma takes my thumbs and squeezes them. "We're like people in a book, and he won't let anybody else read it."

I wanted to read Room because of the movie that came out last year - I know I know, this happens to me a lot. Anyway, I picked it up on the Kindle and read it in the midst of stressing about finals. Good call? Mayhaps.

Room is the story about a boy. Not a coming of age -one, but the story of a five-year old boy that has lived his entire life in a room with his mother, without knowing that a world exists outside of it. The mother was kidnapped when she was nineteen, and treated like a well-kept prisoner since.

Room poses many interesting questions. Is Jack better off not knowing the truth? He obviously grows up a bit wonky, but how was the mother supposed to tell him that there is a world that he can't have? The mother says it herself multiple times - she did the best she could. She provided the child with the most normal childhood one could have while stuck within the same four walls. Should she have convinced the captor to send him away as a baby? Of course she should have, but she was stolen everything else she had. Can you really ask a person to give up their whole entire world? The mother is the personification of altruism and selfishness at the same time, and it really works.

The story was very interesting, because while it felt unreal, rationally speaking, this happens to actual people. The narrative makes it even more intriguing, because the whole book was from Jack's point of view. He doesn't understand what's happening most of the time, but that doesn't mean that he can't describe the things going on around him. Jack is there to witness some disturbing things that I wouldn't even want to hear in detail, and it's awful in a very interesting way. He also grows a lot during the course of the story, mostly because the world needs him to. 

Honestly, Jack got on my nerves a lot. Not necessarily in a bad way, but in the way a five-year old boy usually does. Also, I related to the mother a lot - she was near my age when she was captured - and my heart broke for her every time something bad came her way. That happened a lot, too.

Altogether, Room is a good book. Not necessarily one I would read again right now (more like 20 years from now, maybe) but it's one I will definitely remember for the longest time. It's real and awful and hopeful, and it really captures the beauty of life, and the wonder of discovering something for the first time.

Sorta Like A Rockstar - Matthew Quick

'Mom,if you love me,' I say, my stomach growling with hunger, 'will you please, please, please eat this meal while I watch?

Here's something that's not a surprise to anyone: I picked up this book because I really liked Matthew Quick's The Silver Linings Playbook. In fact, I probably liked it so much that it's unfair to read and review anything of his because nothing will really compare. Anyhoo, I did it anyway. And no, it didn't compare.

Sorta Like A Rockstar is about Amber Appleton, a 17-year old girl who gets thrown to the streets when her alcoholic mother's boyfriend kicks them out. Amber also happens to be a very upbeat, save the world -kind of a person who wishes nothing but the very best for all those around her. She quite literally spends her days running around from one sad individual to the next, until the world finally manages to get her down and suddenly there's just no point to anything anymore. 

The book is clearly divided into two parts: Amber's normal routine of helping everyone and her downfall, when she just gives up. The first part annoyed me when I was reading it, mostly because I didn't really see a point to it. It's justified just fine by the existence of the second half though, because you couldn't really feel her soul-consuming depression if it weren't for the comparison. The latter half is almost depressing to its own downfall, but in the end, it's an Everything Will Be Alright -book. Good things happen to good people and vice versa. If you're into that, that's great. I'm not sure if I was.

Amber is one of those characters that annoyed the life out of me, but she does grow on you whether you want it or not, and by the end I really did want all the best for her - even if she acted irrationally and like a 12-year old most of the book. She also had annoying and unrealistic mannerisms that I can't see anyone I've ever met using - American or not. True? True. Speaking of America - the book was super American. I mean, I suppose these are quirky little cutesies if you know what they're talking about, but I just felt very very disconnected from the setting. I didn't even feel like I was supposed to be included.

The side characters are mostly flat, papery one-trick ponies. I quite liked Donna, Amber's (very stereotypically autistic) best friend's mother. Donna is a cool, strong independent lawyer and quite frankly the only positive female role model Amber has. Amber wants to be just like her, and so do I. I'm not saying that this makes her a good character, but I personally admire her either way.

All in all, I wanted to like this book more than I did, and I feel like I dislike it more the more I think about it. It wasn't downright bad though, nor was it a waste of time - it just wasn't for me. I suppose that happens.

The Martian - Andy Weir

‘You probably think losing a crewman is the worst thing that can happen. Not true. Losing the whole crew is worse. You kept that from happening.

     But there’s something more important we need to discuss: What is it with you and disco? I can understand the ‘70s TV because everyone loves hairy people with huge collars. But disco?

     Disco!?’

A friend of mine told me to read this book, so… I did. If you haven’t familiarised yourself with the main idea after all the media coverage the movie adaptation from last year caused, it’s about a guy, Mark Watney, who gets stranded on Mars and tries to get back to Earth. It sounds like a pretty daunting task of course, but if anyone can do it, I’d most definitely put my money on him. He’s optimistic – the book states that his pleasant personality was part of the reason why he was on the mission to begin with –, a botanist and a fix-it-all sort of a person. It’s pretty perfect.

I often hear people say that the plot is something like this: Mark does a thing. Thing goes wrong. He fixes thing. He does another thing, and so on. I’m not going to claim that this isn’t true, but I don’t think it fully captures just how gripping the book is, how you really do feel Mark’s agony when he almost dies over and over again.

The story is mostly told through his sol logs, with witty commentary on the day’s events (I spent a long time deciding on a quote because I liked so many things!!) and things dumbed down just enough but not assuming that the reader is stupid by any means. I mostly identify first person POV with annoying YA main characters, but I’m fully convinced that this book is what it was made for. Even though he’s stranded on a strange planet all alone, he doesn’t complain any more than necessary. He doesn’t give up even when everything seems hopeless, and he does all of this very believably.

Speaking of believable; I don’t know all that much about Mars (personal shortcoming, I am aware), but at the very least this book felt very real, and I know Andy Weir did a fair amount of research to make it as accurate as possible, using existing technology and all that. Still, it doesn’t feel too detailed, to the point where you just have to doubt whether this can actually be true. All in all, he did a really good job with what he wanted to accomplish.

The other characters got a surprising amount of personality as well, considering how they were portrayed, just doing their own thing and kind of trying to help out where they could. If this makes any sense, I'd sum up that The Martian is a feel-good survival science fiction book. I was genuinely touched by how much complete strangers cared and how they wanted to get Mark home, fuzzy feelings and all that.

I don’t think I have anything bad to say about this book, and I really did try to figure something out. It was just really really good, to be honest. It was very geeky and I still read it because it was just so interesting. If anything, the ending left me a bit cold but it was the only single way the book could have possibly ended. Maybe I was just that sad to let it go. I'll definitely read whatever else Andy Weir has written. Did you know that he put the book on Kindle due to high demand, and at the lowest possible price? And that it became a Kindle bestseller after that? This little information makes me really happy.

Be seeing you, probably with Matthew Quick’s Sorta Like a Rock Star – I finished it yesterday but I’m still deciding whether I want to give it three or four stars. Hope you’ll have a great day ‘till then!

PS. My boyfriend told me that I can’t review a book without a Starbucks picture so you’re stuck with these now, sorry not sorry.

PS. That’s my name btw; Iiris is a character from a book I love, if you’ve for some reason been faithfully following these things.

Surunhauras, lasinterävä - Siiri Enoranta

‘Sadeiassa jokin sai hänet varpailleen, jokin sai hänet toivomaan, että hän voisi koskettaa tämän hameenhelmaa, edes vain helmaa, kuin kangas olisi osa Sadeiaa, ja Tirilaiaa raivostutti, häntä raivostutti nyt, hän ei ollut samanlainen kuin kaikki ne typerät lampaat, jotka sokeina aukoivat suutaan odottaen Sadeialta herkkuja, vai oliko hän juuri sellainen, hän ja valkosuklaakanit, hän ei tosiaan voinut vastustaa niitä, hän oli kaikkien muiden yläpuolella, hän oli Sadeian alapuolella, hän olisi musteenmusta prinsessa!’

‘Something about Sadeia got her on her toes, something made her wish that she could touch the hem of her skirt, even just the hem, as if the fabric were a part of Sadeia, and it made Tirilaia angry, she was angry now, she wasn’t like all those stupid sheep that blindly opened their mouths waiting for Sadeia to give them treats, or was she just like that, she and the white chocolate bunnies, she really couldn’t resist them, she was above everyone else, she was beneath Sadeia, she would be the ink-black princess!’

This is a book I have so much to say about and no idea where to start. Surunhauras, lasinterävä (literally ‘Fragile as sadness, sharp as glass’, though the English translation offered by Bonnier is ‘The Sorrow-deer Tamer’) is Siiri Enoranta’s sixth novel, and continues with the familiar recipe: long, stream of consciousness –type sentences, strange names, a desperate dystopian world and deep, passionate romance. These are also the reasons why Enoranta’s previous novel, Nokkosvallankumous, is at the top of my favourite books of all time, so I’m far from complaining. And I really liked this novel as well… at first, anyway.

Surunhauras, lasinterävä is a story of the Sorrow-deer islands, where every six-year old is told by the sorrow-deer how much sadness they’ll have to endure in their life, and the Sidrineia kingdom, deeply matriarchal and led by a sixteen-year old tyrant. The story has over a dozen characters through whose eyes the intricate plot is told, hopping from place and time to another and recapping the same events from different minds, different principles and morals.

There are definitely good things about the book, and I’ll lead with those because I really wanted to like the story more than I did. I liked Sadeia and Kurkuma’s characters a lot at the beginning, but as the story processed, I came to like Tirilaia more than anyone else. She had her twisted admiration for the young tyrant and her childlike tendencies that made me believe she could really be a ten-year old girl who had been dealt the worst possible hand in life. Her story also didn’t get a quick fix ex machina like most of the other characters’ did, and she continued to have her own, strong voice the whole way through.

The style of the book is flowing but very heavy, the sentences drawling and reaching on and on in the most beautiful ways – if that’s your thing. There’s also something very deeply ingrained and Finnish about Enoranta’s word choices that made me feel like I was reading an old epic that took place in the future, faithful to my home country but set somewhere very far. She has an exceptional grasp on the language as well as a creative mind to put it into use, to the point where the novel’s flimsy plot didn’t prevent me from enjoying the work.

The characters are very different, at least in theory, but the more I read, the more I felt like most of them were blending together, similar voices and thoughts and all-around losing their characteristics in the mess that the book became after the two worlds collided. Some of the characters didn’t get much of a personality at all, and I think it would have been better to leave some of them out and focus on developing the relationships and characters that really mattered.

Speaking of relationships, I think Surunhauras, lasinterävä really suffers from its portrayal of teenage instalove. The novel wanted me to care about two separate romances that started too quick, developed too frantically and were too physical to really relate to, not to mention how these people just very conventionally found each other and fell in love in a heartbeat. I was also meant to care when one of these romances was brought to a bitter end, with the other character going as far as remarking that they’ll never love again. Sure, true love is a thing but here they hardly had enough time to even get past the pathetic crush -phase.

One more thing that might seem irrelevant but made the world of a difference to me: I really liked the last sentence of the book. It was out of nowhere and sudden, but it was hopeful and just so cute. I read it to my mum and she thought it was so cute that she actually started crying. That was definitely a great ending for the book.

All in all, I’d like to give the book 3,5 stars out of 5, because it was good, even though it just didn’t do it for me. I’ll round that down just because I liked Nokkosvallankumous so much more, but I’ll forever be looking forward to Siiri Enoranta’s new works (and read the previous ones when I’m in the country/run into them), because her talent is undeniable and her novels are always interesting, miserable and a pleasure to read. I hope one day her works will be translated into other languages as well, because I've spent so much time rambling about them to non-Finnish friends and because I'd love to see more Finnish quality YA novels out there in the world.

(PS. I promise I’ll start going to Starbucks less… or maybe not. Sorry not sorry! I’ll take a picture somewhere else next time though (maybe))